The Evolution of Automotive Culture

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Climb Dance

Climb Dance is an award winning short film that was produced in 1989. It follows Finnish World Rally Champion, Ari Vatanen, as he climbs Pikes Peak in a Peugot 405 T16. Vatanen won the World Rally Championship in 1981 with Ford before signing with Peugeot in 1984. He piloted the Peugeot 205 T16 during the crazy Group B era. Ari was well known for never playing it safe. He would always push hard and go for the win even when he had a lot to lose. My favorite quote of his came during an interview about the Group B rally years. He said “I always listened to my heart more than my brain. Yes, you will miss out on many victories but you will never have a boring life. Not a dull life.” In Climb Dance, Ari is piloting Peugeot’s last Group B car, the 405 T16. The car is four wheel drive and four wheel steer with over 600 horsepower. He says on his website that instead of shifting down to lower gears, he keep the car in higher gear and slipped the clutch. The reason for this technique was that the power delivery was so vicious in the 405 that it would cause a lot of wheel spin on the gravel surface which caused him to lose time.

**EDIT** May 16th, 2013: This video was remastered in HD

Knowing that the driver and the car are veterans of the almost mythical unlimited performance era of Group B rally adds a special feel to the vintage video. It’s a tribute to an age in rally that we will never see again. The cars were so fast that they were dangerous, yet the legendary drivers of the day rose to the challenge of piloting them to victory. To me, being able to see a piece of that time is just as, if not more, exciting than watching Monster Tajima’s current record run up Pikes Peak.